Harper's mission statement

Stephen Harper’s visit to Afghanistan was significant on many levels -- as a gesture of support to the troops, a signal of Canadian commitment, a teaching moment for the public on Canada’s interests in that fight, and in the broader struggle against international terrorism. It was also, needless to say, a masterpiece of political theatre, showcasing both Mr. Harper’s well-known determination and a subtler sense of tone that many doubted he possessed.

But it will be remembered most for what it said of his view of Canada, and the meaning of Canadian nationhood. Though Mr. Harper’s brief address to the troops contained many good lines, memorable for their pith if not their eloquence, it was much more than a rah-rah speech. It was a national mission statement.

It wasn’t just his invocation of a warrior heritage (“cutting and running … is not the Canadian way”) that generations of nationalist mythmakers have tried to paint over. It was his explicit appeal to Canadian idealism. Or perhaps should I say his challenge to it: Mr. Harper wasn’t flattering Canadians, in the manner of so many previous political leaders, on our matchless national worth. He was daring us to prove it.

The Afghanistan mission, he told the troops, is “about more than just defending Canada’s interest.” It is also “about demonstrating an international leadership role for our country. Not carping from the sidelines, but taking a stand on the big issues that matter.”

In case anyone missed his point, he repeated it. “You can’t lead from the bleachers. I want Canada to be a leader.… A country that really leads, not a country that just follows... providing leadership on global issues, stepping up to the plate, doing good when good is required.”

Taking a stand? Providing leadership? And doing so, not in easy ways that require no more of us than our own splendid example, but in hard ways that risk Canadian lives? We have not heard such talk from our leaders in a long while. It wasn’t quite “ask not what your country can do for you.” Nor, indeed, was he suggesting Canadians should ask what they can do for their country, but rather what Canada can do for the world, and in that moment he soared.

This was not that fatuous invitation to self-love, “the world needs more Canada.” It was: Canada owes more to the world -- more than we have been giving it. And yet it was equally clear that this was as much for Canada’s sake as the world’s.

This notion, after all, of Canada being, or aspiring to be, or having a duty to be, a leader in the world: it’s not self-evident, is it? I can’t imagine the prime minister of, say, Belgium, saying such a thing. No offence to the Belgians: it’s not a part of most nations’ self-definition. It’s usually found only in countries with a glorious past, like France or Britain, or in those with an ideological mission to the world: the Soviet Union, the United States. And Canada?

Why not? Or perhaps, what’s the alternative? A new world nation such as ours, a nation of immigrants, settled in the recent past, is never going to be defined by ties of blood or culture. That is, it cannot define itself in terms of its identity: the features common to all of its people and unique to them, that mark them apart from other peoples. And yet that is what our nationalists attempted. Stepping into the post-imperial void, they created us in their own self-image, as inveterate statists, diffident, polite, and above all not-American.

This had many weaknesses, and gave rise to all sorts of pathologies, among them an inability to debate policy as policy, rather than what it portended for our identity. But at its root it failed to ask a rather important question: Why? Not who are we, but why are we? Why this set of borders and not others? For all their perpetual alarm at this or that threat to Our Very Existence, Canadian nationalists never seemed to have given much thought to why Canada should exist. And having failed to ask the question ourselves, we found we had little answer when others asked it for us.

Implicit in Mr. Harper’s address is a very different sort of nationalism: a nationalism of moral purpose. Canada exists to do good, for its own people and for the world. It is defined by its beliefs and measured by its acts, not by the virtues of its people, real or imagined. Indeed, it makes no claim to uniqueness in this regard, but rather upholds principles that are timeless and universal. But it aspires to be the best exemplar of these: in Mr. Harper’s words, to “be a leader.”

We are not used to being spoken to in such terms. But perhaps we are in a mood to listen.